Poetics of Weaving and Fractal Algerianity in Anouar Benmalek’s Work
Geo-affectivity Interstitiality and Narrative Mathematics
Résumé
This article explores how Anouar Benmalek’s work reshapes contemporary Algerian writing through a narrative poetics grounded in weaving, geo-affectivity, and fractal identity. Through L’Enfant du peuple ancien, Le Rapt, Le Sang des promesses, and Ô Maria, Benmalek constructs a narrative architecture based on intertwined voices, fractured temporalities, and emotionally charged spaces. His writing relies on what may be called “narrative mathematics”, where repetitions, echoes, symmetries, and recursive patterns generate coherence within fragmentation. This structure mirrors Algeria’s historical wounds – colonization, the independence struggle, and the civil war – while reflecting the plurality of contemporary cultural identities.
The analysis highlights how space operates as an emotional agent rather than a backdrop: deserts, wounded cities, and shattered homes become repositories of memory and affect. Geo-affectivity thus reveals how Algerian experience emerges through sensitive territories marked by trauma and resilience. At the same time, narrative interstitiality – between languages, times, and identities – organizes a fractal form of Algerianity in constant recomposition.
Drawing on narratology, geocriticism, stylistics, and affect theory, this study underscores the hybrid nature of Benmalek’s writing within the landscape of the extreme contemporary. It argues that weaving, fragmentation, and polyphony function not only as aesthetic strategies but also as modes of inhabiting history and identity, offering a renewed vision of Algeria as wounded, dynamic, and continuously self-inventing
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